Revisiting The Mass-Size Relation Of Structures In Molecular Clouds

Abstract

We revisit the mass-size relation of molecular cloud structures based on the column density map of the Cygnus-X molecular cloud complex. We extract 135 column density peaks in Cygnus-X and analyze the column density distributions around these peaks. The averaged column density profiles, $N(R)$, around all the peaks can be well fitted with broken power-laws, which are described by an inner power-law index $n$, outer power-law index $m$, and the radius $R_{\mathrm{TP}}$ and column density $N_{\mathrm{TP}}$ at the transition point. We then explore the $M-R$ relation with different samples of cloud structures by varying the $N(R)$ parameters and the column density threshold, $N_0$, which determines the boundary of a cloud structure. We find that only when $N_0$ has a wide range of values, the $M-R$ relation may largely probe the density distribution, and the fitted power-law index of the $M-R$ relation is related to the power-law index of $N(R)$. On the contrary, with a constant $N_0$, the $M-R$ relation has no direct connection with the density distribution; in this case, the fitted power-law index of the $M-R$ relation is equal to 2 (when $N_0\ge N_{\mathrm{TP}}$ and $n$ has a narrow range of values), larger than 2 (when $N_0\ge N_{\mathrm{TP}}$ and $n$ has a wide range of values), or slightly less than 2 (when $N_0<N_{\mathrm{TP}}$).

arXiv comment14 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by Research in Astron. Astrophys

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